Photography by Mona van den Berg | 2025

Fawziya was born in 2005 in Shingal, in northern Iraq, into the Yazidi community. In 2014, when ISIS attacked Shingal, she was nine years old. She was abducted, separated from her parents, and over four years sold several times before being freed. Her parents and oldest brother remain missing to this day.
In 2024 she travelled to the Netherlands for a conference marking ten years since the Yazidi genocide and has since applied for asylum. Now learning Dutch and dreaming of a future in law, she hopes to combine legal work with helping children. Her story, supported by the Yazidi Legal Network and the Nuhanovic Foundation, speaks to both the crimes committed against the Yazidi people and the determination of survivors to rebuild their lives and pursue justice.
Her full story of survival and the fight for justice will be released in November as part of our campaign Justice: From War to Democracy and Freedom.
About The Photographer
Mona van den Berg is a Dutch photographer whose work focuses on human rights, women’s rights, and migration. She makes injustices visible and gives a platform to marginalized groups whose voices are often overlooked in mainstream media. Her photography has been published nationally and internationally, combining compassion with long-term engagement to ensure that people’s perspectives are represented on their own terms.
Her major project The Silent Wounds of War – Unveiling the Silence documents survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in 20 countries, including Bosnia, Kosovo, Congo, Liberia, and Colombia. The project will culminate in a book publication on 19 June 2027. Alongside this, she also works on broader stories about displacement, migration, and resilience.
Her work has received several awards, including recognition in multiple categories of the Zilveren Camera, the most prestigious photojournalistic award in the Netherlands.
“Fawziya is impossible to overlook, despite her small stature. She is a striking presence, radiant and unforgettable. Yet beneath that light lies a deep trauma. She leaves a profound impression—fighting relentlessly for her future while staring the unimaginable, her own trauma, directly in the eye. A survivor of ISIS, she has endured horrors that defy imagination. And still, she looks straight into the camera, defiant: You will not break me.”
– Mona van den Berg
Justice
From War to Democracy and Freedom
Our latest initiative, a storytelling campaign titled Justice: From War to Democracy & Freedom, showcases the real-life experiences of survivors and victims of international crimes and grave human rights violations. At the heart of this campaign are the survivors themselves, the faces, voices, and stories behind these precedent-setting legal battles, which will be brought to life through a series of survivor portraits captured by acclaimed photographers. Through these portraits, our goal is to make the resilience, courage, and pursuit of justice of these individuals tangible, urgent, and deeply relatable.